Generally, lighting patterns for use in the interior of an elevator cage are classified into direct lighting patterns, indirect lighting patterns, and mixed direct-indirect lighting patterns.
Referring to FIG. 1, an example of indirect lighting patterns is illustrated. Considering the exemplified indirect lighting pattern, light bulbs 1, such as fluorescent lamps or incandescent lamps, are mounted to the ceiling of an elevator cage, and a translucent shield panel 3 is mounted underneath the light bulbs 1. Since most modern elevators are designed such that blowers 10 are located on corners of an elevator cage and air ducts 20 are arranged at a lower side of the blowers 10, airflow is guided at lateral sides of the light bulbs 1 to thereby be introduced into the elevator cage as shown in FIG. 1.
In the above-described indirect lighting pattern, although the shield panel 3 prevents passenger's eyes from being temporarily blinded with intense light from the light bulbs 1 and ensures effective ventilation in the interior of the elevator cage, the shield panel 3 is easily covered with dust, thereby requiring periodical separation and cleaning thereof. The shield panel 3 is also troublesome in use because it must be separated in the case of exchanging the light bulbs 1. Furthermore, since the shield panel 3 must be mounted throughout the ceiling of the elevator cage, it causes the height of the ceiling to be lowered, making it impossible to transport freight 5, such as a tall wardrobe.
FIG. 2 illustrates another example of indirect lighting patterns. As shown in FIG. 2, the light bulbs 1 are mounted on opaque shield panels 3 so that light emitted from the light bulbs 1 is reflected from the ceiling and wall surface of an elevator cage in directions designated by arrows B and C, rather than being directly illuminated to passengers. In this case, although there is no risk of causing passenger's eyes to be temporarily blinded with intense light from the light bulbs 1 and of lowering the height of the ceiling of the elevator cage, the shield panels 3 tend to partially block paths of airflow, resulting in a poor ventilation of the elevator cage. Further, lighting the interior of the elevator cage using only the light reflected from the ceiling and wall surface of the elevator cage is insufficient to achieve a required luminance, resulting in a low lighting efficiency.
FIG. 3 illustrates an example of direct lighting patterns. As shown in FIG. 3, the light bulbs 1 are mounted to the ceiling of an elevator cage without using a shield panel that intercepts light from the light bulbs 1. With this direct lighting pattern, light from the light bulbs 1 is directly illuminated to passengers, thereby problematically causing passenger's eyes from being temporarily blinded and lowering the height of the ceiling of the elevator cage. Furthermore, due to the fact that incandescent lamps are mainly used as the light bulbs 1, the interior temperature of the elevator is inevitably raised.
Meanwhile, the sizes of elevator cages differ from one another in accordance with their installation places. Such a difference in the sizes of the elevator cages requires that an appropriate number of light bulbs is prepared to correspond to the size of the corresponding elevator cage, and then, are manually mounted separately one by one to the ceiling or wall surface of the elevator cage by means of fasteners. This is an extremely labor intensive task.